Christian Fanning is in his second year with the Eastern Washington University Eagles, and pundits say it could be their year.

Online PR News – 26-July-2014 – Cheney, WA – Christian Fanning believes this could be the year that the Eastern Washington University Eagles win it all.

After winning two consecutive Big Sky Conference titles, only to be eliminated in the FCS semifinals, top football analysts are picking Eastern Washington to win the NCAA Football Championship Subdivision. And Christian Fanning is intent on playing a key role in the team's success. "My goal," he says, "is to become the starting placekicker and kickoff specialist for the Eagles, and contribute to the team winning an FCS National Championship."

Christian Fanning is going into his second year with the Eagles. He has spent many years preparing himself for the highest level of play that he can achieve. He was a standout kicker on the Cathedral Catholic High School Dons, good enough to have hit a fifty-one yard field goal in his senior year, and a forty-yard three-pointer as a junior, when the Dons racked up a 12-1 record. Christian Fanning was named a San Diego Section Player of the Week in November of that junior year, 2011.

"I like competition," Christian Fanning says simply, "and thrive when under pressure."
Even before he got to the Cathedral Catholic team, Christian Fanning had years of training behind him. "Christian has been working with [The Kicking System] since his Pop Warner days at Torrey Pines Pop Warner," said one of his early coaches, during Christian Fanning's stellar junior prep season. "Christian, now a junior, has been working with TKS for the last five years."

The Kicking System is a kicking academy that trains players in football and soccer. Early on, the coaches there recognized Christian Fanning's talent and promise. "Over the course of the last few years, TKS has had the honor of working with Christian Fanning, the next kicker to come out of powerhouse Cathedral Catholic High School," a TKS coach blogged during a 2012 training session.

But there was still a lot of hard work ahead for Christian Fanning. "A principal quality of any player is the ability to be coached," says Kicking System owner John Matich, himself a former standout prep and collegiate kicker. "Listening and following a coach's instructions and responding positively to feedback can help any football player improve their game. Each athlete must have the desire to master the basic fundamentals."

With the help of Kicking System coaches, Christian Fanning put in the long hours required to begin mastering the fundamentals that took him to success at Cathedral Catholic, and now to playing for the Eastern Washington University Eagles. As promising as the coming football season is, however, coach Beau Baldwin is intent on keeping his players focused on what they need to do in order to succeed. "Like any coach, you're more concerned with the postseason, and that's definitely the case with us," he said. He called the preseason pick a compliment, but noted that it said more about what the team has already achieved than it did about the coming year.

Meanwhile, Christian Fanning is working hard to improve his game.

About: Christian Fanning is vying to be the Eastern Washington University Eagles Starting Kicker